The Last Mapmaker Flashcards
They couldn’t look down their noses at me until they figured out which rung of the ladder I stood on.
The Last Mapmaker
Doesn’t anyone around here know how to use a blasted ink pen?
The Last Mapmaker
If demons really did bargain for souls, I would have sold mine to eat that porridge every day.
The Last Mapmaker
He swiveled the glass lens out from its case, held it up to the light of the window, and began his morning ritual.
The Last Mapmaker
I could tell from the thickness of the paper that it was from someone important.
The Last Mapmaker
Captained by the heroes of the Longest War, these ships shall sail for all corners of the globe to claim new lands in Her name.
The Last Mapmaker
One hundred thousand leks!
The Last Mapmaker
No one had ever seen these lands, but they must have been a paradise, because the dragons never came back.
The Last Mapmaker
Maybe more people believed in bedtime stories than I knew.
The Last Mapmaker
The Tail Is the Teeth.
The Last Mapmaker
It meant that the end was connected to the beginning.
The Last Mapmaker
I braced my shoulder against the manhole, reached my hand deep into the crevice, and pulled out the square candy tin that held my money.
The Last Mapmaker
He must have heard the jingle of money in my pocket.
The Last Mapmaker
Now the War’s over, Navy battle armor brings in a real nice price on the shadow market.
The Last Mapmaker
Your daughter’s the greatest forgery artist the Fens has ever known.
The Last Mapmaker
I could copy it if I had a sample, but it’s too complicated to just make it up.
The Last Mapmaker
I would find a way to leave it all behind, even if it meant I had to bite off my own tail to do it.
The Last Mapmaker
With this kind of money, I could get you a lineal.
The Last Mapmaker
He picked it up too and held both letters side by side.
The Last Mapmaker
Without looking away from me, he took the golden eyeglass from his pocket and held it up between us.
The Last Mapmaker
I did everything short of begging on my knees to ask for a position on that southbound ship.
The Last Mapmaker
The tremor began almost a year ago, before you started working for me.
The Last Mapmaker
It would bring so much honor to the family to have me be a part of such an important mission.
The Last Mapmaker
But you’re not leaving this room till you tell me what this key unlocks.
The Last Mapmaker
I’d found this secret hole months ago, never dreaming I’d have to use it to escape my own father.
The Last Mapmaker
Everyone was down at the seaside to watch the ships depart.
The Last Mapmaker
I went on tossing the buns until they were gone, then dropped the basket.
The Last Mapmaker
You’d give me all this money just to let you get on that ship?
The Last Mapmaker
I didn’t know what made me feel worse: my pathetic situation or the seasickness.
The Last Mapmaker
Sailors scurried around each other, pulling ropes and tying them off.
The Last Mapmaker
In every direction, there was only sea and sky, both a shade of bright, glittering blue.
The Last Mapmaker
The last time I had seen him he was wearing a cap, but I knew without a doubt that he was the same boy who had followed me that night in the Fens.
The Last Mapmaker
Not only did I have no future to look forward to after our journey’s end; now my very place on the expedition was in danger.
The Last Mapmaker
Whoever had loaded his crates onto the ship had jumbled them all up, and he was afraid that some of his more precious items were missing.
The Last Mapmaker
You draw them on silk, using a pen dipped in mottle fish ink so that it won’t smudge.
The Last Mapmaker
Do you think they drew this because they saw a dragon there?
The Last Mapmaker
Sight the sun and measure the angle using the scale on the side.
The Last Mapmaker
The salt that had crusted there rubbed onto the black silk of her sleeve, but she didn’t seem to care.
The Last Mapmaker
This is a Lineal of Honor, given out by the Queen herself for ‘acts of great bravery.’
The Last Mapmaker
She winked and cupped a hand under her bob of thick hair, and then she left me, her jacket fluttering behind her like a cape.
The Last Mapmaker
My officers have discovered a thief on board.
The Last Mapmaker
Now the crew will be afraid of her, but they won’t respect her.
The Last Mapmaker
He had long ago used up all his medicine for his hand tremor, and he needed me to help him draw daily charts and write notes for the captain.
The Last Mapmaker
But how do you chart a course for somewhere no one had ever been, sir?
The Last Mapmaker
I shot my hand into my pocket and grabbed a thin wrist.
The Last Mapmaker
I picked out a food stand selling golden rice with nuts and ginger cradled in bowls made from carved-out pineapples.
The Last Mapmaker
There was one more paragraph that the newspaper hadn’t printed.
The Last Mapmaker
Talk to him and see if you can get him to at least be open-minded about searching for the Sunderlands.
The Last Mapmaker
I lay in my hammock, trying to make sense of everything I had just learned but I was distracted by the scratching sounds from the wall behind my head.
The Last Mapmaker
I hurried to the rope coils and found the boy crouched like a mongoose ready to strike.
The Last Mapmaker
At that moment, the rope pulled taut and yanked his feet out from under him.
The Last Mapmaker
I could now add “harboring a stowaway” to my long list of accomplishments.
The Last Mapmaker
Everyone always thinks us sailors don’t know what’s going on.
The Last Mapmaker
Here, take the scope and focus on that island with the bay.
The Last Mapmaker
Instead of concentrating on making my lines perfect, I let my pen track my gaze as I took in every jutting rock and stretch of beach.
The Last Mapmaker
He floated silently over the dark deck, timing his footsteps with the dip and rise of the ship.
The Last Mapmaker
We crouched, silent at first, until we were sure the waves splashing against the hull would drown out our whispers.
The Last Mapmaker
I guessed he must be talking about when our ship would arrive at the fiftieth parallel.
The Last Mapmaker
If I could get hold of those documents and go through them, maybe I could gather enough evidence to make him come around.
The Last Mapmaker
I was getting used to reading records like this, but the first time, it had come as quite a shock.
The Last Mapmaker
The only thing that steadied me was looking at the chart I’d made.
The Last Mapmaker
But beneath them flew another banner: yellow with a black spot.
The Last Mapmaker
I trust you not to tell anyone my treasonous thoughts.
The Last Mapmaker
We have the same father but different mothers.
The Last Mapmaker
We will be celebrated and sought after, and I’ll finally prove that I’m deserving of my father’s esteem.
The Last Mapmaker
This is going to change everything, miss, I said as she closed the door to her cabin behind me.
The Last Mapmaker
My breath stopped in my throat as a large dark hump rose out of the water and rolled back down into the coming wave.
The Last Mapmaker
If I’m right, we will find the southern waters to be an absolute paradise, full of animals feasting on the bounty that summer brings.
The Last Mapmaker
If you’re so upset by it, then what are you doing here, sir?
The Last Mapmaker
It did sound like our hull was scraping up against sand or gravel.
The Last Mapmaker
Not many people would put themselves at risk to catch a disease such as this one.
The Last Mapmaker
He knew the Sunderlands existed, and he was deliberately steering us away from them.
The Last Mapmaker
Do you know what it looks like for one country to take over another?
The Last Mapmaker
If we had a letter written in the captain’s own hand and signed by her, the crew would have to obey that just as sure as if the order had come from her own lips.
The Last Mapmaker
Shocked whispers rippled through the officers, but the crew smiled.
The Last Mapmaker
Who will guide the ship to her destination?
The Last Mapmaker
He took my hand and pressed the case into my palm.
The Last Mapmaker
How can you see what you need to see without a good eyeglass?
The Last Mapmaker
But when I got back to my cabin that night, I found him swinging in my hammock, eating my ginger cookie rations.
The Last Mapmaker
Waves this large would sink us in minutes.
The Last Mapmaker
Why haven’t we shortened sail?
The Last Mapmaker
Then we are truly lost, she whispered.
The Last Mapmaker
I haven’t swallowed those vile drops in days.
The Last Mapmaker
What is the real story, ma’am?
The Last Mapmaker
She has a terrible taste for gambling, and I have given that girl a fortune to pay off her debts.
The Last Mapmaker
I made up the story that she had saved my life because I hoped that having a lineal of her own would satisfy her.
The Last Mapmaker
She unclasped her top button, and I saw that she wore another necklace underneath the lineal: a white shell with dark red markings strung on a piece of twine.
The Last Mapmaker
And his eyes were a color you rarely saw in Mangkon: green and brown swirled together, like a fern stem.
The Last Mapmaker
It was a shiny white scallop shell the size of a half-lek coin, with a leather cord strung through a hole at the top.
The Last Mapmaker
I was desperate to get back to my son, but the War always kept me away.
The Last Mapmaker
An empire of cowards and thieves - that’s what we are.
The Last Mapmaker
We slid right through the open cabin door just as thousands of gallons of water crashed behind us.
The Last Mapmaker
Get below and get that fire out!
The Last Mapmaker
I started to call out again when I saw one of them reach back and punch the other in the stomach.
The Last Mapmaker
In the flicker of lightning, I saw the unmistakable shimmer of scales.
The Last Mapmaker
We’ve got the stench of mutiny on us thick.
The Last Mapmaker
I vowed that one day I’d pay back that man who’d saved my life.
The Last Mapmaker
You don’t know what happens to people’s minds when they get this far from home.
The Last Mapmaker
You set a good course.
The Last Mapmaker
Beyond it lay another slightly larger island, and beyond that hovered that dim shadow of an even larger one.
The Last Mapmaker
But the seawater was icy cold, a reminder of how close we were to the southern pole.
The Last Mapmaker
He’d taught me how to make a shelter out of a crate and pack it all around with paper trash to hold the heat in.
The Last Mapmaker
And something I had never paid attention to before: the left edge of the silk was ragged and frayed, as if someone had ripped a larger piece of fabric in half.
The Last Mapmaker
I thought while I was there, I might as well pick her pockets.
The Last Mapmaker
I have it to me because despite how badly I’d betrayed him, he still cared for me.
The Last Mapmaker
There’s not a soul on earth who could find us now.
The Last Mapmaker
Even if I knew which way we were going, I couldn’t row another stroke.
The Last Mapmaker
He’d wanted it so badly that he would have done anything to give it to me.
The Last Mapmaker
I never thought I would find myself listening to Dumpling, but our only chance was to follow this dragon home.
The Last Mapmaker
The Slake stared at me through her haw.
The Last Mapmaker
Lush trees covered the slopes that cradled our black sandy beach.
The Last Mapmaker
If anyone had ever come to a place this bountiful before, surely they would never have left.
The Last Mapmaker
Pressing her stubby clawed feet against the cave floor, she dragged herself in a tighter circle around her nest.
The Last Mapmaker
That’s how a small girl brings a big man down.
The Last Mapmaker
A steady wind whipped up from the south, filling our sails and pushing us away from the Great Southern Continent so fast that we barely had time to get one last glimpse before it vanished in the mist.
The Last Mapmaker
When they hauled the boat in, they were shocked to find a woman inside, clinging to life.
The Last Mapmaker
It just wasn’t the whole story.
The Last Mapmaker
